OK, my memory is faulty. That said, there is really never a need for even 4GB of caching -- that's pure luxury given that if you rapidly cached even 1-2GB you could have a substantial data outage and still stay well ahead of the viewer.

True, but without the movie fully cached, I was thinking that you might have to wait if you wanted to skip ahead several chapters (e.g., a movie you started watching a few days ago but never finished). But I just tested this out with a movie on my network, and here's what I'm seeing:

You start the movie and it starts at the beginning. Starts playing nearly immediately, with a buffer just slightly ahead at first. Assuming you have a decent network, the buffer should increase significantly after a short while. If you skip ahead to another chapter, it does that just as quickly/well as any other streamer I've used. The buffer then appears to start to increment from that point forward. My guess is that it's designed primarily to avoid pauses/stuttering. If I then try to rewind into an area that had not yet been buffered it, again, seems to do just as good a job as any other streamer I've used (and probably better than some). I should note that I'm testing this with a 802.11n connection, so it's quite fast. If you were trying to use this with 802.11g, you might have more trouble, but the on-board buffer could make even that workable for the average person under the more common situation of simply starting up a movie from the beginning.

That's all good news in terms of Apple prehaps relaxing the need to allocate enough of the buffer for an entire movie's storage, but here's the bad news: Their primary desire is for you to rent movies from them. And as you can read in this thread, there are a large percentage of people who do not have reliable 6Mbps or better download speeds. If you have a slow connection, the Apple TV will need to buffer at least half of the movie (and make you wait 30-60 minutes to start watching it) to ensure that you don't run up against the buffer 1/2 - 2/3 of the way through watching it. And to account for the possibility that you might fall asleep halfway through the movie and want to start it back up again the next day, I can see why they would want to allow the entire movie to fully load to the buffer, so that the next day you can start it up at whatever point you fell asleep.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rogo

And really, you can fit 500 apps into a single gigabyte.

That may be true about productivity apps on the iPhone, which are making use of the built-in UI controls (text boxes, etc.), but I suspect that graphically-rich apps/games consume significantly more than that, and those are the types of apps/games that might be more desirable for the Apple TV. For example, I just took a quick search in the iTunes store and found the graphically-rich FPS "Modern Combat 2", and that takes up 440MB.

OTOH, there could be a lot of popular apps which pull their graphically-rich content from the web (Facebook pulling photos, etc.) and those could simply make use of a smaller chunk of common cache for that. Loading another app could clear that cache out and then start to make use of it.

EDIT: I should also add that the Apple TV does have a USB port, so perhaps gamers will be allowed to connect external storage in the future. And there's nothing to stop Apple from coming out with a 64GB Apple TV in the future, aimed at that market. And now that I'm thinking this through, another obvious possibility: Under "Computers" you can store your movies and music as stored on a central computer. I see no reason (other than perhaps DRM/licensing concerns) why you couldn't store all of your Apple TV apps on that computer, and it will just copy one app at a time to the Apple TV's local buffer.

Having said all that, though, I still suspect that apps of this sort won't be coming to the Apple TV within the next 6 months, simply because Apple would have probably demoed or hinted at them if their release were that imminent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rogo

Your point about metadata is interesting, I wonder how much caching it will do. I suppose that could take up some space, but again, even 10,000 songs, shows and movies doesn't sound like nearly 1GB of metadata. More like 50-100MB.

Yeah, that's probably right, and I don't even know what, if anything, it really is caching. Unlike the original Apple TV, it's not syncing any of your music collection to the box, so it's always streaming that from an always-on iTunes computer. It's possible that it's only caching the metadata/coverart on-the-fly for whatever list of music/movies you're seeing on-screen at the time. Once you scroll down your list of movies further, it might let the previous screens' metadata get stomped on. But, as you said, that metadata probably doesn't need much space, so they can probably cache it all so as to keep the UI performing well.

Scott R--------------I'd much rather watch a great movie in B&W at 240 lines of resolution than a lousy movie in 1080p with lossless audio.

I've always been an Apple guy. I have 2 Macs and an iPod with 8,000 songs (but very little video). I'd love to get off cable. I'm trying to decide on the best streaming device to get. I don't watch very many TV shows (Mad Men and a couple others), but I do watch a lot of live sports and movies. Most of the reviews rate the Roku higher than AppleTV in terms of current content and future scalability (1080p and USB).

Why did you guys choose AppleTV? If you had it to do over again, would you buy something else?

Dropouts, static, high noise floor. I of course have no problems doint the same with itunes with the same laptop and network.

Hopin for a cheap/ez fix before I have to try L-Tech or sonos.

thanks,
James

Why not wait a couple weeks for AirPlay? Do you have either an iPhone or an iPod Touch? Download the Rhapsody app and away you go.

Even if you don't have one, getting an iPod Touch would be more cost-effective than Logitech and especially Sonos.

If AirPlay works as advertised, I really think that Apple will give Sonos and the Squeezebox products a true run for their money for the first time. Once radio, speaker and stereo manufacturers start producing AirPlay compatible products, watch out...

anyone else here getting dropouts when streaming muisc on the new apple tv? I read on the apple support forum that quite a few people are having this problem and then have to reenter their wpa password after every dropout. I also have this problem and have now relegated the apple tv to non-use status in my system. i stream music to my denon receiver via dlna and to my sony bluray player with no problems.

There is even more good news for PS3 owners: starting on Monday you'll be able to instantly watch some movies and TV shows in (1080i crossed out) 1080p high definition, listen to Dolby 5.1 channel surround sound, and view an increasing portion of our content library with subtitles.

Why not wait a couple weeks for AirPlay? Do you have either an iPhone or an iPod Touch? Download the Rhapsody app and away you go.

Even if you don't have one, getting an iPod Touch would be more cost-effective than Logitech and especially Sonos.

If AirPlay works as advertised, I really think that Apple will give Sonos and the Squeezebox products a true run for their money for the first time. Once radio, speaker and stereo manufacturers start producing AirPlay compatible products, watch out...

I did not know airplay allows for the streaming of anything outside of itunes content. It would seem to me that it would be very ignorant (and very UNapple) if they allowed streaming of other "non-apple" content...like Rhapsody! Don't ge me wrong, I REALLY hope I'm just that...wrong.

I have Rhapsody on my iphone....it's great for playback on the phone. How does that help me get Rhapsody content from it or my laptop wirelessly to my appletv?

perhaps I'm appearing much more ignorant than I am.

James

Actual phone call (see pic to left):

Tech (responding to laughter): "I'm sorry sir, did I miss something?"

Me: "Yeah, a case of Diet Mountain Dew walking across my living room."

Further, if indeed airplay works with ANY app, that's all well and great for the iphone, but my itunes library (that meshes with Rhapsody) is on my VAIO, so I'd need a similar "airplay" function to work with it, seeing running Rhapsody on my iphone won't allow me to access my own 20,000 song library, just my laptop.

James

Actual phone call (see pic to left):

Tech (responding to laughter): "I'm sorry sir, did I miss something?"

Me: "Yeah, a case of Diet Mountain Dew walking across my living room."

I did not know airplay allows for the streaming of anything outside of itunes content. It would seem to me that it would be very ignorant (and very UNapple) if they allowed streaming of other "non-apple" content.

I have Rhapsody on my iphone....it's great for playback on the phone. How does that help me get Rhapsody content from it or my laptop wirelessly to my appletv?

perhaps I'm appearing much more ignorant than I am.

James

I think a very important use of Airplay will be to use the ATV as an accessary to an iDevice in order to display content which does not originate from Apple. There's a very interesting post in this thread that talks about it in quite some detail. Since it's not here yet no one can be exactly sure what, if any, restrictions it will have. The ability to fire off a presentation, for example, to an ATV from an iPad is very exciting. Our kids dropping by and just projecting photos and home videos onto the ATV is fantastic, and that is only the start.

There are a few things that I hope get "fixed" by Apple as time goes by. Waking up target iTunes systems is something that should be fairly simple, at least for recent systems which allow for waking up over a wireless network. I would also hope that Apple at least considers implementing iTunes serving on Linux and WHS systems. This would improve the universality of the process.

Further, if indeed airplay works with ANY app, that's all well and great for the iphone, but my itunes library (that meshes with Rhapsody) is on my VAIO, so I'd need a similar "airplay" function to work with it, seeing running Rhapsody on my iphone won't allow me to access my own 20,000 song library, just my laptop.

James

I think we just don't know too much about AirPlay. Even the Apple store people had very little to add about it when I picked up my 2nd ATV (finally found a store with one left!).

I don't know about an iDevice acting as an intermediary between an iTunes library and the ATV. Nice idea though.

There is even more good news for PS3 owners: starting on Monday you'll be able to instantly watch some movies and TV shows in (1080i crossed out) 1080p high definition, listen to Dolby 5.1 channel surround sound, and view an increasing portion of our content library with subtitles.

The 5.1 sound will no doubt appeal to many. I have yet to move up to that kind of audio. Just run of the mill stereo via a Bose Cinemate system ( analogue with the woofer). The wires running all over the place has been one drawback. But I do hear good things about sounds coming from behind and what have you. Is there a compact wireless system that can do all of this?

Philip

Edit: as far as the 1080p video, surely that would be very compressed and a low bitrate. You aren't going to see Blu-Ray quality streaming for a long time. Maybe the signal can be sent in an extremely compressed way and the power of the PS3 is then used to uncompress it in real time?

The 5.1 sound will no doubt appeal to many. I have yet to move up to that kind of audio. Just run of the mill stereo via a Bose Cinemate system ( analogue with the woofer). The wires running all over the place has been one drawback. But I do hear good things about sounds coming from behind and what have you. Is there a compact wireless system that can do all of this?

I did not know airplay allows for the streaming of anything outside of itunes content. It would seem to me that it would be very ignorant (and very UNapple) if they allowed streaming of other "non-apple" content...like Rhapsody! Don't ge me wrong, I REALLY hope I'm just that...wrong.

I have Rhapsody on my iphone....it's great for playback on the phone. How does that help me get Rhapsody content from it or my laptop wirelessly to my appletv?

Fair enough. That's the question we're all waiting for answers for: exactly what will we be able to push around ours home via AirPlay? I expect some 3rd party stuff... we'll see where things end up.

I've always been an Apple guy. I have 2 Macs and an iPod with 8,000 songs (but very little video). I'd love to get off cable. I'm trying to decide on the best streaming device to get. I don't watch very many TV shows (Mad Men and a couple others), but I do watch a lot of live sports and movies. Most of the reviews rate the Roku higher than AppleTV in terms of current content and future scalability (1080p and USB).

So live sports is available on cable... and broadcast... And in some very limited ways on the internet:

1) If your ISP is a big brand-name ISP, you can probably get ESPN3, which has a lot of ESPN's content, but not NFL for example.

2) You can pay for mlb.tv.

3) There isn't a ton more I know of, but others can chime in.

The AppleTV currently doesn't support mlb, but Roku does. Roku supports a similar video rental store to Apple's (it's Amazon's), but doesn't integrate as well as your existing iTunes infrastructure -- which should get better with AirPlay.

Both handle Netflix.

There is no difference in HDMI cables. If you can see the picture without visible dropouts or sparklies, the cable is working at 100%. No other cable will display a better version of that picture. You're simply wrong if you think there is a better digital cable than one that is already working. (Oh, and plasma didn't die because of logistics problems, nor does OLED ship in big boxes because it comes from Korea.)

Musically - I have all my music ripped to my Mac in Apple Lossless. I'm a little concerned after reading a few posts that I will not get the fullest possible sound after it is streamed via my new airport extreme to my AVR.

I'm most interested in the ATV2 for its ability to bring my music and photos to my home theater rather.

There is even more good news for PS3 owners: starting on Monday you'll be able to instantly watch some movies and TV shows in (1080i crossed out) 1080p high definition, listen to Dolby 5.1 channel surround sound, and view an increasing portion of our content library with subtitles.

Hold your horses. As far as 1080p, the "they" that you refer to seems to be a PS3 blog. The Netflix press release on Oct. 14 mentioned Dolby 5.1. It didn't say anything about 1080p.

Sorry, I just realized the PS3 blog was actually posted by the VP of Product Dev at Netflix so the 1080p announcement looks real. He refers to a Netflix press release with details, but there is nothing there on 1080p. That's what caused me to question the blog until I realized who wrote it.

The AppleTV currently doesn't support mlb, but Roku does. Roku supports a similar video rental store to Apple's (it's Amazon's), but doesn't integrate as well as your existing iTunes infrastructure -- which should get better with AirPlay.

Both handle Netflix.

I think there are two other issues:

1- The integration of the ATV within the iDevice world. That is a big plus.
2- At any given time device A will be better on paper than device B. But you have to look how these things are going to evolve over time and you have to try and predict where things are going to lead. If you feel Roku has the resources to evolve into something you want then you go that way. I personally have more confidence in the Apple team.

I have more confidence in Apple than Roku, too. But if you wanted, say, to watch mlb.tv next spring, you can't really assume AppleTV will do that.

There is no difference in HDMI cables. If you can see the picture without visible dropouts or sparklies, the cable is working at 100%. No other cable will display a better version of that picture. You're simply wrong if you think there is a better digital cable than one that is already working. (Oh, and plasma didn't die because of logistics problems, nor does OLED ship in big boxes because it comes from Korea.)

I have more confidence in Apple than Roku, too. But if you wanted, say, to watch mlb.tv next spring, you can't really assume AppleTV will do that.

idk, still speculation, but since that's what we're doing here (speculating) i think there's a LOT of evidence pointing towards apps on the apple tv and we're likely to have a mlb.tv app on the apple tv next spring.

Yes, it might. But the AppleTV may never support apps. And Roku will definitely support mlb this spring.

There is no difference in HDMI cables. If you can see the picture without visible dropouts or sparklies, the cable is working at 100%. No other cable will display a better version of that picture. You're simply wrong if you think there is a better digital cable than one that is already working. (Oh, and plasma didn't die because of logistics problems, nor does OLED ship in big boxes because it comes from Korea.)

I might by the current version of the Apple TV just for Netflix streaming and to listen to music streamed from my PC while I use my PC as I have a stereo system and TV in the same room as my PC. I'm currently using my Xbox 360 for Netflix streaming and music streaming but I'd like to do that on something a bit quieter and I don't plan on renewing my Xbox 360 Gold membership next year, also I don't like using Netflix streaming on my blu-ray player. Does this new Apple TV show any indication of how much of the movie you watched like the Xbox 360's Netflix?

Also I noticed that this Apple TV does not upscale to 1080p. My Xbox 360 and blu-ray player does for Netflix by upscaling. So has anyone here compared the image quality on Netflix streaming with an Xbox 360 with this Apple TV on a 1080p TV?

idk, still speculation, but since that's what we're doing here (speculating) i think there's a LOT of evidence pointing towards apps on the apple tv and we're likely to have a mlb.tv app on the apple tv next spring.

AirPlay video support won't be out until November (I'm still unclear as to whether AirPlay audio support is out now - I think it's only available to developers with access to the latest beta iOS version), but based on developer statements, and as I've stated in this thread previously, apps like MLB.TV will most likely be able to stream via AirPlay *this year*.